A piece built around the “all the accountability, but none of the authority” reality of being a product manager. A little long, but still interesting and insightful.
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Jon Gatrell
Short post:
In 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, [tag]Adam Smith[/tag] wrote that the needs of producers should be considered only with regard to meeting the needs of consumers. While this philosophy is consistent with the [tag]marketing concept[/tag], it would not be adopted widely until nearly 200 years later.
Here is the deal – the 4 P’s “are what they are”, but perhaps they need a little revitalizing. The emergence of later market realities across industries are resulting in a need for a different approach. On the extreme, some have predicted the demise of marketing – specifically Piers Fawkes:
Certainly the conditions are right. I mean, if “marketing” were a brand, we would have redesigned and [tag]relaunched[/tag] it a long time ago. As it is, the idea stands for an extraordinary bundle of things. It is a very messy concept indeed, and the practice…well, the practice is even messier.
So I thought about it death? Probably not but it could be something else. I centered on the following questions “is it a relaunch or brand extension?” So perhaps Marketing, as a discipline, is just a late stage market and requires a different approach.
So as with any late stage market, or in this case, a discipline, the first step is to look for innovation – find an emerging P. Various folks have indicated [tag]web 2.0[/tag] could be considered an innovation fulcrum, but continues to demonstrate an emergence of new channels which is changing the effort to impact change. These new channels require a portfolio based approach which focuses on optimizing revenue by channel and is effectively product agnostic and segment focused.
So we have the [tag]4 P’s[/tag] of today:
- Product
- Price
- Placement (as a geographer I can’t use place, it’s too specific)
- Promotion
So if the 4 P’s represent the market mix, the 5 P is managing the mix against multiple channels – legacy, emerging and under development. Marketing teams continue to be challenged with only so much capacity and budget. With limited resources a ROI based strategy is required. To that end, the 5th P, portfolio management, requires you balance investment, expectations and the ability to execute in such a way that you don’t end up over invested in a channel which isn’t delivering the optimal return.
Not all products are good for all channels and not all channels perform the same for like/similar products so a detailed set of instrumented processes and metrics are required to drive a successful portfolio management strategy. So is the 5th P, Portfolio, is effectively a brand extension of marketing or is it more of an assortment extension?
So [tag]PowerPoint[/tag] is the core medium of marketers, we are asked to give presentations all the time. Sometimes it’s a prospect presentation, some times the executive team or to your reports. Did you know that most EVERYTHING can be effectively explained in 5 steps. The 5 Step process has it’s roots in P&G and is a great platform for communication. The five step can be used for memos, collateral or even wedding proposals. So here is the 5 step framework:
1. Background. Why are you here? Only baseline info in the Background – this is the basis for discussion, basically just the facts or mutually agreed to corporate/industry myths. In a prospect presentation it’s the problem/need.
2. The Idea or Recommendation. What are you proposing? This is typically one sentence, but I cheat some times.
3. How it Works. The details. In addition to How, also What, Who, When, Where. Another way to look at this is plan.
4. Key Benefits. Often these tie to the actions in how this works.
5. Next Steps. Who has to do what and by when for this to happen?
Often when giving a 5 step to the uninitiated they often don’t believe you will proceed against the five steps. It’s a little odd, but it happens. It represents a series of talking points and necessary supporting data or metrics to drive the decision process. The [tag]5 Step Presentation[/tag] can be more than 5 slides, but most things can be done in 5 slides.